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New York: American Institute of Electrical Engineers 1938. Hard Cover. First Edition. Claude Shannon is known as the inventor of information theory and for the first use of the word "bit". "He was a contemporary of the originators of computers such as John Von Neumann, Howard Aiken, and Alan Turing, working in the field of communication at the Bell Telephone Laboratories during World War II." (Biographical Dictionary of Computer Pioneers) Offered here is Shannon's first paper, written in 1937 at Bell Labs. "Shannon proved that the two-valued algebra developed by George Boole could be implemented electrically by telephone relays, and used as a basis for designing computer circuits. This was probably the most significant theoretical step toward the construction of electronic digital computers made prior to World War II [this paper] was an abstract of his thesis for the degree of master of science at MIT. The thesis, his first published paper [seen here], aroused considerable interest when it appeared. In 1940 it was awarded the Alfred Noble Prize of the combined engineering societies of the United States, an award given each year to a person not over thirty for a paper published in one of the journals of the participating societies." (Origins of Cyberspace 363) A quarter of a century after this paper was published, H.H. Goldstine, in his book The Computer from Pascal to Von Neumann, called this work "one of the most important master's theses ever written, a landmark in that it helped to change digital circuit design from an art to a science." (see Sloane and Wyner, Shannon's Collected Papers, pxii). Offered here is the entire Volume 57 of the Transactions of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers. iv, 806. Includes errata. Last few pages of index are creased. Bright and clean internally. Original publisher's blue cloth, slight bow to the binding and some silverfish damage to the boards (partially retouched). Housed in a custom clamshell case with rounded leather spine. A touch of spotting and browning to the endpapers mostly at the gutters. Quite scarce on the market, with only 2 copies appearing at major auction in the last 20 years. An early and important piece of computer information theory. In Transactions of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, Vol. 57 (1938). pp. 713-23. Quarto, original publisher's blue cloth. Near Fine.

[Book #17228]